About
Black holes and accretion astrophysics
Kayhan Gultekin is interested in the accretion physics, evolution, and feedback from black holes across the mass scale, from stellar-mass to supermassive. His research addresses questions such as: What is the relative population of black holes by mass and location? How do black holes and galaxies affect each other’s formation, growth, and evolution? Are the smallest galaxies and black holes governed by the same processes as larger ones? If not (as current data imply), what differing physical processes are at play? And to what extent are accretion and outflow relationships similar across the mass scales? Gultekin’s work is both theoretical and multi-wavelength observational, with data from HST, Chandra, EVLA, Gemini, and Magellan.
Black holes have been the unifying theme of his astrophysical research, and in particular the interface between galaxies and supermassive black holes is where he spends most of my research time. He has spent a lot of time studying the relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. Lately, he has been focussing on pairs of supermassive black holes, wether gravitationally bound (and thus binary black holes) or unbound (and possibly observable as dual active galactic nuclei). He is especially excited about gravitational wave astrophysics and synergies with electromagnetic astrophysics.
Background
BA, University of Pennsylvania; PhD, University of Maryland
Publications
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